Why Pence Must Go Down with Trump

As unfit for office and as large a threat Donald Trump may be to the nation, should he be forced from office due to collusion with Russia, out right treason or some other cause, it is imperative that Mike Pence be caught up in the maelstrom and forced from office along with him.  Why? First, because I believe that Pence's "Sergeant Schultz routine" is a charade and that he was very much aware of the activities of the Trump/Pence campaign.  Secondly, because Pence represents as much of a clear and present danger to America as Trump poses. Pence is just as dishonest as Trump and, perhaps, more frighteningly, the man is deranged religious zealot who believes that he is on a mission from God to impose the equivalent of a Christofascist theocracy on the nation.   A column in the New York Times focuses on Pence and just how dangerous he is for constitutional government and secular society.  Indeed, the author of a biography on Pence says Trump is the lesser evil.  Here are excerpts:

There are problems with impeaching Donald Trump. A big one is the holy terror waiting in the wings.

That would be Mike Pence, who mirrors the boss more than you realize. He’s also self-infatuated. Also a bigot. Also a liar. Also cruel.

To that brimming potpourri he adds two ingredients that Trump doesn’t genuinely possess: the conviction that he’s on a mission from God and a determination to mold the entire nation in the shape of his own faith, a regressive, repressive version of Christianity. Trade Trump for Pence and you go from kleptocracy to theocracy.

That’s the takeaway from a forthcoming book by the journalists Michael D’Antonio, who previously wrote “The Truth About Trump,” and Peter Eisner. It’s titled “The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence,” it will be published on Aug. 28 and it’s the most thorough examination of the vice president’s background to date.

The book persuasively illustrates what an ineffectual congressman he was, apart from cozying up to the Koch brothers, Betsy DeVos and other rich Republican donors; the clumsiness and vanity of his one term as governor of Indiana, for which he did something that predecessors hadn’t and “ordered up a collection of custom-embroidered clothes — dress shirts, polo shirts, and vests and jackets — decorated with his name and the words Governor of Indiana”; the strong possibility that he wouldn’t have won re-election; his luck in being spared that humiliation by the summons from Trump, who needed an outwardly bland, intensely religious character witness to muffle his madness and launder his sins; and the alacrity with which he says whatever Trump needs him to regardless of the truth.

“People don’t understand what Pence is,” D’Antonio told me. Which is? “A religious zealot.”

And D’Antonio said that Pence could end up in the White House sooner than you think. In addition to the prospect of Trump’s impeachment, there’s the chance that Trump just decides that he has had enough.

So it’s time to look harder at Pence. “The Shadow President” does. It lays out his disregard for science, evident in his onetime insistence that smoking doesn’t cause cancer and a belief that alarms about climate change were “a secret effort to increase government control over people’s lives for some unstated diabolical purpose,” according to the book.

It suggests callousness at best toward African-Americans. As governor, Pence refused to pardon a black man who had spent almost a decade in prison for a crime that he clearly hadn’t committed. He also ignored a crisis — similar to the one in Flint, Mich. — in which people in a poor, largely black Indiana city were exposed to dangerously high levels of lead. D’Antonio told me: “I think he’s just as driven by prejudice as Trump is.”

At Trump’s urging and with taxpayer money, he and his wife, Karen, flew to a football game in Indianapolis just so he could make a big public gesture of leaving in protest when, predictably, some of the players took a knee during the national anthem.

And, following Trump’s lead, he rallied behind the unhinged former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio. . . . The conservative columnist George Will seized on Pence’s speech to write that Pence had dethroned Trump as “America’s most repulsive public figure.”

“He is absolutely certain that his moral view should govern public policy,” D’Antonio told me.

D’Antonio then recounted two stories that he heard from college classmates of Pence’s after the book had gone to bed, so they’re not in there. . . . . Another involved a college friend of Pence’s who later sought his counsel about coming out as gay. D’Antonio said that Pence told the friend: “You have to stay closeted, you have to get help, you’re sick and you’re not my friend anymore.”

I asked D’Antonio the nagging, obvious question: Is America worse off with Trump or Pence?

“I have to say that I prefer Donald Trump, because I think that Trump is more obvious in his intent,” he said, while Pence tends to “disguise his agenda.” D’Antonio then pointed out that if Pence assumed the presidency in the second half of Trump’s first term, he’d be eligible to run in 2020 and 2024 and potentially occupy the White House for up to 10 years.  Heaven help us.

Pence must never occupy the White House.  Nothing would be more fitting than seeing his sanctimonious, cruel, bigoted ass go down in flames with Trump.  

James Dobson Does Contortions to Support Donald Trump

I've never viewed George Will as inherently evil and his departure from the Republican Party indicates that he retains some level of morality and decency.  In sharp contrast is James Dobson, a man who has been marketing anti-LGBT hatred for decades and who truly makes the Pharisees of the New Testament look like pillars of honesty and decency.  As Will has made the moral decision to leave the GOP, Dobson has engaged in mental and opportunist contortions to find a way to endorse Donald Trump who met with Dobson and other hate group leaders this past week. The full degree of Dobson's hypocrisy and disingenuousness is his pronouncement that Trump "recently accepted a relationship with Christ."  Pardon me momentarily as I run to the bathroom to vomit!!!  The only positive aspect of Dobson's backing of Trump is that it makes it all the more difficult for those who still want to stick their heads in the sand to ignore the fact that there are few more un-Christian and dishonest than those of the professional Christian class.  The nastiest whores and prostitutes have more integrity than James Dobson and his fellow Christofascists.  A piece in Politico looks at Dobson's willing self-prostitution to Trump.  Here are excerpts:

Donald Trump: Born-again Christian? The presumptive Republican nominee captured a significant number of evangelical voters during the Republican primary, and that may be due to recently accepting “a relationship with Christ,” according to evangelical leader James Dobson.

Trump met with hundreds of evangelical leaders in New York earlier this week, and while some well-known figures — such as Liberty University president, Jerry Falwell Jr. — have endorsed the candidate, others are more hesitant to do so.
 However, Dobson, a Christian psychologist and founder of the Focus on the Family group, said he knows “the person who led [Trump] to Christ. And that’s fairly recent.” “I don’t know when it was, but it has not been long,” Dobson said in an interview with Pennsylvania megachurch pastor Michael Anthony following that meeting in New York. ”I believe he really made a commitment, but he’s a baby Christian.” Of the meeting, Dobson — who was previously critical of Trump — said, "I certainly liked what I saw today," POLITICO previously reported.

“I’ve been a Christian, and I love Christianity and the evangelicals have been so incredibly supportive,” Trump said in the private session with evangelicals this week, according to audio obtained by POLITICO. “Don’t forget, when I ran, and all of a sudden I went to states that were highly evangelical, like as an example, South Carolina, and they said, ‘Well, Trump won’t win this state because it’s evangelical’ … not only did I win, I won in a landslide.”

Dobson and Trump deserve each other.  Both are narcissists - although Trump takes it to a far higher level - and utterly dishonest.  Over the years there has been no lie to big or too file for Dobson to pass up if it furthers his agenda of turning America into a Christian theocracy - a theocracy in which, of course, Dobson will play a leading role.  Both Trump and Dobson are despicable human beings. 

Republican Self-Destruction

With more and more sane and rational people fleeing a Republican Party that seems obsessed with sinking to the lowest common denominator among its increasingly racist, ignorance embracing party base, the rest of the world must think that America has had a collective nervous breakdown.   What is perhaps most frightening is that the GOP's decent into full insanity is accelerating and one is seeing things ranging from Donald Trump's suggestion that he would take the nation to war with China to the party's full surrender to Christofascists who want a Christian theocracy rather than constitutional government.  A column in the New York Times looks at the GOP's apparent death wish.  Here are excerpts:

Whatever one may think about the current president and the two Democrats duking it out to replace him, you have to admit that they have, by and large, conducted themselves with an admirable level of civility and couth becoming of the office. 

Not so for their Republican counterparts. Indeed, the entirety of the Republican Party seems dead set on convincing voters that it has lost its way and is spinning out of control, consumed with anger and devoid of answers. The two leading Republican presidential candidates engaged this week in a crude, sophomoric tiff involving insults of each other’s spouses.  A nude picture of the front-runner’s wife was used in a Facebook ad.

The poor choices and poor behavior of Republicans are not confined to the presidential candidates. Senate Republican leaders still haven’t agreed to grant a hearing for the president’s Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland, even when a new CNN/ORC poll found that approximately two-thirds of Americans want Garland to get a hearing and 57 percent agree that President Obama was right to make the appointment to fill the seat. Another finding from the poll, released earlier this week, found the Republican Party’s favorability also at its lowest point since that [2013 government] shutdown.” 

And then there is what’s happening on the state level. On Wednesday, in a special session of the Republican-led North Carolina legislature, lawmakers pushed through a bill that a New York Times editorial called “appalling” and “unconstitutional.” The bill “bars transgender people from using public restrooms that match their gender identity and prohibits cities from passing anti-discrimination ordinances that protect gay and transgender people.” The Republican governor, Pat McCrory, signed the bill into law on Wednesday and tweeted: “Ordinance defied common sense, allowing men to use women’s bathroom/locker room for instance. That’s why I signed bipartisan bill to stop it.” 

When Republican officials aren’t being infantile, they’re being archaic.The future of this country bends toward more inclusion and acceptance, regardless of our occasional regression. This country needs a president who doesn’t pout or get lost in puerile protestations. 

I understand that Republican voters are filled with an insatiable anger stemming from unbridled electoral enthusiasm that still failed to halt unremitting social change, or elect their hopelessly unimpressive recent presidential candidates. But they are allowing themselves to be led out of the mainstream, over a cliff and into oblivion. 

America is watching the Republican Party demonstrate its headstrong desire to self-destruct. I’m guessing most of America is not amused.

Ted Cruz Reveals His Hate Group Based "Religious Liberty" Plan

Throughout his presidential campaign Ted Cruz has courted the ugliest elements of the far right Christian groups and spokesman.  As part of this self-prostitution effort, Cruz has set up a Religious Liberty Advisory Council.  Not surprisingly, Cruz's council includes a who's who of anti-gay extremists and those who want a Christian Theocracy to replace the existing government of the United States.  Chairing Cruz's advisory council is hate group president Tony Perkins who, besides being virulently anti-gay, also has white supremacist ties.  Think Progress has details on this frightening advisory group.  Here are excerpts:

In his bid for the presidency, Ted Cruz (R) has consistently surrounded himself with some of the most extreme social conservatives in the country. In addition to appearing beside these individuals at various events, he also recruited a Religious Liberty Advisory Council — what Fox News’ Todd Starnes calls a “faith-based Justice League.”

Through Starnes, Cruz unveiled this week just what kind of ideas this council has developed to protect “religious liberty.” Given the fact that his council consisted of representatives from only the most conservative iterations of Christianity, the 15-point list is unsurprisingly dedicated to privileging Christian beliefs and enabling discrimination against the LGBT community and women.

For example, one of the recommendations is to “rescind Executive Order 13672 – an order that requires certain federal contractors to not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.”  The council also recommends that Cruz “direct all federal agencies to stop interpreting ‘sex’ to include ‘sexual orientation’ and/or ‘gender identity.'” This would gut essential protections that LGBT people — and particularly members of the transgender community — are relying on.

The LGBT community isn’t the only target; Cruz would also finally have the opportunity to strip away important protections for women under Obamacare. His “religious liberty” advisers would have him “direct the Department of Health and Human Services to eliminate its requirement that all employers include coverage for all FDA-approved contraceptive methods and sterilization procedures.” This would make it even harder for women to access birth control than the Hobby Lobby case has already made it.

Other suggestions include protecting religious organizations from the IRS if they engage in political speech, expanding school prayer to the fullest extent possible, and ensuring that military chaplains can condemn homosexuality and women who have sex outside of marriage without consequence.

None of these ideas is surprising, however, given who serves on Cruz’s committee. His council’s chair is Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, an anti-LGBT hate group. “These are the policies that he is going to pursue,” Perkins promised Starnes. “He is absolutely committed to the issue of religious liberty.”

With Ted Cruz as president, it seems the only religion that will have any liberty is his particular conservative brand of evangelical Christianity.

Ted Cruz’s Christian Dominionist Vision for America

At times it is difficult to decide which of the Republican presidential candidates poses the most frightening threat to America and religious freedom for all in particular.  But, as a piece in the Washington Post lays out, the prize may go to Ted Cruz who is not only borderline repulsive to look at, but also harbors very anti-democratic Christian Dominionist views.   Dominionist like Cruz want nothing more that an overthrow of the United States Constitution and its replacement by a Christian theocracy with, of course, the Dominionists making all of the rules. It is no accident that in Iowa Cruz garnered the endorsement of every extreme right wing Christian organization, a number of which are registered hate groups.  Here in Virginia he will likely get the backing of The Family Foundation, another Dominionist organization that has strong white supremacist undercurrents.  Think of the religious extremism of the Puritans on steroids and that gives a hint of what Cruz and company want to impose on America.  Here are column highlights:

Now that Ted Cruz has an Iowa victory under his belt, it is time to take a deeper look at his Christian approach to politics. What is his real vision for America? Cruz likes to talk about “taking back” or “reclaiming” the United States. What does he mean by this?

Cruz’s shoe leather campaign in Iowa targeted the state’s large number of evangelical Christians. But not all evangelicals are the same.

Donald Trump appeals mostly to those connected with the Christian prosperity movement, a form of evangelicalism that celebrates the accumulation of wealth as a sign of God’s blessing.

Marco Rubio appeals to suburban, educated, middle- and upper-middle-class evangelicals. These evangelicals normally avoid the Pentecostal prayer meetings of the prosperity crowd and change the channel when televangelists show up on their big screens.

Cruz resonates with the evangelical culture warriors. He mixes what New York Times columnist David Brooks describes as political “brutalism” with a belief that he is engaged in a fight with the devil for the soul of the nation. It is only a matter of time before Cruz assumes the role of the Old Testament prophet Elijah and tries to cast down fire from heaven to destroy the “prophets of Baal” who oppose his campaign.

When Cruz says he wants to “reclaim” or “restore” America, he does not only have the Obama administration in mind. This agenda takes him much deeper into the American past. Cruz wants to “restore” the United States to what he believes is its original identity: a Christian nation. . . . .
That is why he has David Barton on his side.

For several decades Barton has been a GOP activist with a political mission to make the United States a Christian nation again. He runs “Keep the Promise,” a multimillion-dollar Cruz super-PAC. He’s one of Cruz’s most trusted advisers.

He writes books and hosts radio and television shows designed to convince evangelicals and anyone else who will listen that America was once a Christian nation and needs to be one again. But his work on the history of the American founding has been discredited by historians, many of whom are his fellow evangelicals. This does not seem to stop him.  

Barton’s work is an important part of Cruz’s larger theological and political campaign to take back America. If Barton can prove that the United States was once a Christian republic, then Cruz will have the historical argument he needs to sustain his narrative of American decline.

Anyone who has watched Cruz on the stump knows that he often references the important role that his father, traveling evangelist Rafael Cruz, has played in his life. During a 2012 sermon at New Beginnings Church in Bedford, Texas, Rafael Cruz described his son’s political campaign as a direct fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

The elder Cruz told the congregation that God would anoint Christian “kings” to preside over an “end-time transfer of wealth” from the wicked to the righteous.
According to his father and Huch, Ted Cruz is anointed by God to help Christians in their effort to “go to the marketplace and occupy the land ... and take dominion” over it. This “end-time transfer of wealth” will relieve Christians of all financial woes, allowing true believers to ascend to a position of political and cultural power in which they can build a Christian civilization. When this Christian nation is in place (or back in place), Jesus will return.

Rafael Cruz and Larry Huch preach a brand of evangelical theology called Seven Mountains Dominionism. They believe Christians must take dominion over seven aspects of culture: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business and government.
Seven Mountains Dominionism is the spiritual fuel that motors Cruz’s campaign for president.
Cruz wants to defund Planned Parenthood because it threatens the traditional Christian understanding of the family, one of the seven “mountains.”

When Cruz talks about the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, he almost always discusses it in the context of persecution against Christians, such as Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis.

He is not interested in crafting new models of American pluralism to respond to the country’s ever-growing religious diversity. Rather, religious liberty is a code word for defending the right of Christians to continue to hold cultural authority and privilege.

Cruz’s approach to politics is inseparable from this theology. His goal is to lead a Christian occupation of the culture and then wait for the Second Coming of Christ.

These people - and Cruz - are very, very scary.